Speaker 1: All right, we're ready.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Five weeks ago I sat down with biographer Walter
Speaker 2: Isaacson to try and unpack his new six hundred page
Speaker 2: biography of Elon Musk. Already some stories had jumped off
Speaker 2: the page.
Speaker 1: That night, he was deciding whether or not to allow
Speaker 1: starlink to be enabled to allow a sneak attack on Crimemea.
Speaker 2: When Isaacson set out to write this biography, he believed
Speaker 2: he was taking on a world changing figure.
Speaker 1: Must turns to his security guard, said you got a
Speaker 1: pocket knife, and he takes off the flow aboard himself.
Speaker 1: He just prized it open.
Speaker 2: What he got was a subject who was also volatile,
Speaker 2: increasingly so in chaos and conspiracy.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm thinking it's any artic to buy Twitter
Speaker 1: because he doesn't have a fingertip feel for social emotional networks.
Speaker 2: And so Isaacson did what he'd done with Steve Jobs
Speaker 2: and tried to capture it all through stories.
Speaker 1: And I said, I want to be by your side
Speaker 1: at all times, and I want for two years to
Speaker 1: have nothing off limits. In a very low mono, Tony
Speaker 1: goes Okay.
Speaker 2: It allowed him to see up close, for better and worse,
Speaker 2: how Musk operates.
Speaker 1: Musk is probably the richest councher forever. So he would
Speaker 1: stay with Larry Page and they'd stay up all night,
Speaker 1: and Musk would talk about how we have to be
Speaker 1: careful of AI, and believe it or not, these fights
Speaker 1: caused him to quit speaking to each other. He'd see
Speaker 1: some calm on a factory line or at a launch pad,
Speaker 1: and he'd be unhappy. He'd say, I've got to stir
Speaker 1: things up getting to Mars. Done. Excuse being a total
Speaker 1: but I want the reader to see it in action.
Speaker 2: And to examine as Isaacson did, what gave Musk as
Speaker 2: boy Wonder a reputation in the first place.
Speaker 1: Musk and this cadre around him, they have Kansas spray
Speaker 1: paint and they're just putting big xes on machines and
Speaker 1: it's almost like kids playing on playground. These people are
Speaker 1: standing there overlooking the Gulf of Mexico in this god
Speaker 1: forsaken place, and all they can focus on is how
Speaker 1: are we going to get a colony to Mars. He
Speaker 1: gets a very lean team that's willing to put up
Speaker 1: with him being cold and angry for those amazing moments
Speaker 1: where they feel like they're changing the world.
Speaker 2: My name is Evan Ratliffe and this is On Musk
Speaker 2: with Walter Isaacson. Join us in this four part series
Speaker 2: as Isaacson breaks down what he saw shadowing Elon Musk,
Speaker 2: the speed and the drama that fuel Musk's accomplishments, and
Speaker 2: the wreckage she leaves behind. We'll discover how Isaacson clung
Speaker 2: on to this tornado for just long enough to capture
Speaker 2: a vivid portrait of a polarizing genius.
Speaker 1: Well. I like the fact that people who say I'm
Speaker 1: not as tough on Musk as I should be are
Speaker 1: always using anecdotes from my book to show why we
Speaker 1: should be tough on Musk.
Speaker 2: Listen to On Musk on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts,
Speaker 2: or wherever you get your podcasts.